Excerpt from Secret History of the Witches, Vol III

THE WOMEN'S MYSTERIES IN ROME: Fenta Fauna and Female Resistance
Excerpt from Secret History of the Witches, Vol III © 2015 Max Dashu
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The state religion of Rome permitted a few women to act as
priestesses, but under tight controls. It usually required them to be
patrician matrons still married to their first husband (univirae, or “oneman women”). This was required of the priestess of Fortuna Mulieribus,
the only thing we know about her or her rites. [Scheid 1992: 389] The
flaminica Dialis (priestess of Jupiter) also had to meet this requirement;
she entered her priestly coupledom as a virgin bride and never
remarrying. Like the Vestals, the flaminica enjoyed a suspension of male
guardianship. [Lefkowitz and Fant, 191. Vestals discussed in previous
chapter.]
State goddesses like Mater Matuta and Fortuna Primigenia embodied
patrician norms. The statue of Mater Matuta was veiled like a patrician
matron. [Ogilvie, 70] These state-sanctioned cults upheld women's legal
status as dependent minors, divided women according to marital status and class, and elevated mothers of sons
over other women. They enforced the class hierarchy. In the Matralia rites, noble, “one-man” matrons took a slave
into her temple, simply in order to drive her out in a fury “with slaps and blows.” [Olmsted, 251; Scheid, 386,
405]
The backdrop to all this was male dominance. Certain rituals highlight matrons’ vulnerability to cheating
husbands, especially as they aged. Roman women made offerings to Fortuna Virilis on August 1 so that their
blemishes might be hidden from the male gaze, and to “regain the loss of the waning affection and the desire of
men for their wives or mistresses.” [Fasti IV, 133ff, in Webster, 171 n. 177]
Though barred from most official temple culture, Roman women celebrated their own rites commemorating
birth, harvest, and death, as we’ve already seen with the Carmentalia. They laid out offering tables for Juno
Lucina for a week following every birth. The groundbreaking women’s historian Sophie Drinker pointed out (in
1948!):
“In the goddess cults, it was the custom, too, for rites to be celebrated in the home at private altars. Every woman
could offer sacrifice, burn incense, pour the libation, play instruments, dance, and sing magic formulas for all the rites
of the life cycle.... she could sing the dirges [nenia] and make the gesture [planctus] appropriate for calling out to the
deceased [conclamatio]. She could carry out the immemorially old customs of primitive faith.“ [Drinker, 146. This book
is available online as a pdf, and although outdated in some ways, is still a rich source with many prescient insights about
goddess culture and its repression under intensified patriarchy. http://www.archive.org/details/musicandwoman001260mbp ]
Italian women kept their ancient goddess veneration alive in sanctuaries that were older than Rome. Wreathcrowned votaries carried torches to Diana’s temple at Nemi. A bronze priestess in the act of pouring libation
shows the cultural mix at Nemi circa 125 BCE: she wears an Italic
diadem, Greek robes and a Celtic torc. [Brendel, 428-9] The lake at
Nemi was called the Mirror of Diana. It was fed by the spring of Egeria,
who was also worshipped there. [Darrah, 28] Women came to Egeria’s
sanctuary to pray for children and easy birth: “Almost countless clay
models of the uterus have been found near her shrine, together with the
torch, the symbol of midwives and of the Mater Matuta, who in the
early hours of the morning opened the uterus and bade the baby come
Votive uterus from Nemi
forth.”[Hurd-Mead, ca 49] The sanctuary of Nemi at Aricia remained
an important center of goddess veneration under the empire. It
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welcomed the votaries of Isis. A relief found at the site depicts African women dancing in ecstasy surrounded by
ibises and other symbols of Egyptian religion.
Another major religious center was the Roman temple of Diana on the Aventine Hill. An ancient bronze pillar
stood there, inscribed with the Aventine canon: laws governing the festivals of all Latin cities. Every hearth in
Italy celebrated the festival of Diana on August 13th, when the Latin league was first founded. Her ancient statue
was modeled on Artemis of Ephesus, by way of Marseilles. Diana had another grove at Tibur, where she was
called Opifera, “help-bringing.” [Palmer, 58, 77; Ogilvie, 65-7]
BONA DEA
Opifera was also a title of Bona Dea, the “good goddess,” whose temples nourished a culture of female
sovereignty and of psychic resistance to male dominance. Tradition said that women built the sanctuary of Bona
Dea in the distant past, and its association with the women's mysteries endured. No men were allowed in this
temple or the nearby Aventine temple of Diana, the headquarters of plebian women. Diana was seen as a protector
of the oppressed classes, especially the enslaved. This was also true of Bona Dea and Ceres, another goddesses
with strong plebeian allegiances. [Spaeth, 92] Romans understood her rites as being pro populo, “for the people.”
Bona Dea's sanctuary was located at a large rock atop the Aventine, where her festival was celebrated on May
1. [Fasti, V.153] Her priestesses kept sacred serpents that “neither felt nor inspired fear.” [Scheid, 391. He places
the shrine in a “cave”, while Fowler (101) has it “under a big sacred rock.”] The snake was
a primary attribute of Bona Dea. Her statues show a serpent coiling around her right arm,
and sometimes drinking from an offering bowl in her hand. Her left arm cradles a
cornucopia, the attribute of Ops, Fortuna, and Terra Mater. Snakes and healing herbs were
also kept at the grove of the goddess Angitia or Anguitina at lake Fuscinus. [Piscinus,
online]
The priestesses of Bona Dea kept an herbarium: “... all kinds of herbs are found in her
temple, from which the priestesses mostly make medicines which they distribute...”
[Brouwer, 224, 401; Hurd-Mead, 49; Scheid, 391-400; Fowler, 104] Plutarch refers to
herbs again in relation to the Good Goddess, saying that women who set up shrines for her
in their homes “take pride in making use of all kinds of growing and blooming plants”.
[Quaestiones Romanae XX]
The healing power of the Good Goddess is also reflected in archaeological finds of
offerings. At the sanctuary of Bona Dea in the southern city of Paestum, archaeologists
discovered clay figurines, wombs, and eyes “left by cured or ailing women,” along with
quantities of wine cups and loom weights. The temple dates back to the 5th century BCE. “Over the centuries, her
intercession was variously sought for such purposes as healing, fertility, being freed from slavery, fruitfulness in
agriculture and for the protection of the entire Roman people.” [Eric Pace, “Women's Cults Of Antiquity: The
Veil Rises,” New York Times, April 30, 1985 http://www.nytimes.com/1985/04/30/science/women-s-cults-ofantiquity-the-veil-rises.html?pagewanted=all] Similar finds at female shrines at Nemi and other goddess
sanctuaries in Etruria and southern Italy show a connection between their religious observances.
Inscriptions shower Bona Dea with titles: Caelestis (“Heavenly”), Augusta, Sancta (“holy”), Regina
Triumphali (“Triumphant Queen”), Lucifera (“light-bringing”), Obsequens (“well-disposed”), Opifera (“aidbringing”), Pagana, Agrestis and Sevina (She of the countryside, fields, and seeds). As Domina (“lady”), she is
thanked in an inscription for healing an eye disease. She is linked to other goddesses who share her titles: Fortuna,
Ceres, Juno, the Parcae, Hygeia, and Venus Cnidia. [Brouwer, 236, 346, 376, 388-92, 416, 419, titles; 235, 315,
312, 413-19 on goddesses]
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Bona Dea was itself a title, not the actual name of the goddess, which was taboo. According to Servius, “it was
forbidden to call her by her name.” Cicero explained further, “Bona Dea is that goddess whose name must not
even be known by men.” [De Haruspicum Responsis XVII, 37] Her secret name was Fenta Fauna or Fenta Fatua.
[A long-ago reference, which I can’t find now, said that Fauna was depicted as an old woman with pointed ears
holding a serpent.] Fenta was the name of a Gaulish goat-goddess the Romans called Caprina Galla. Her Roman
counterpart was Juno Caprotina, who wore a goatskin cloak and drove a chariot drawn by goats. (See Juno
Sospita in Photos.) Enslaved women were prominent among her devotees. The title Fatua, though Latin, was also
borne by southern Gaulish goddesses of southern Gaul. [Brouwer, 221; Palmer, 167, 16, 35]
Fenta Fauna? Villa of Mysteries, Pompeii
The names Fatua and Fauna are both associated with oracular cults. Fatua comes from fatuari, “to speak for,”
implying prophetic utterances inspired by the goddess, with overtones of the Fatae, goddesses of destiny. (Our
words fate and fairy, are derived from this root.) Writers in late antiquity ridiculed Fatua and linked her with the
word fatuus (“foolish,” source of the English “fatuous.” Etymologists are uncertain about the root of this usage,
but it probably represents Roman (male) writers’ degradation of ancient ecstatic prophecy. The Christian writer
Isidore of Seville makes this explicit: “Some think that the Fatui are descended from the admirers of Fatua,
Faunus’ prophesying wife, and that originally they were called fools (fatui) as they became exceedingly
bewildered by her prophecies and turned insane.” [Etymologiae X, 103] Fauna and Faunus were linked to
prophecies spoken in ecstatic or intoxicated states. (Those of Faunus were linked to male dream-incubation
wrapped in the hide of a sacrificed animal, a practice also attested in pagan Ireland.)
Bona Dea was a goddess of entranced prophecy. Her rites were celebrated with wine, music and
“revelry.”[Brouwer, 369; on 335 he refers to Pliny’s connection of intoxication and stupor with the language of
prophecy] The serpent coiled around the goddess’s arm had prophetic significance (as with the Pythia) and
symbolized healing power. Hygeia, the Asclepian goddess of healing, was also represented with a (much larger)
snake. No one knows anymore what the priestesses of the goddess did with the serpents in her cave herbarium.
The symbolism of her statues, with a snake coiled around her arm and a patera in the other, suggests that women
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fed them milk with the offering bowl.
Cornelius Labeo equated the “Good Goddess” with Earth, Maia and the grandmother goddess Ops, as the
source of all life, caring for and helping living beings. Festus linked her to Damia, a goddess of growth. Women
celebrated two festivals for Bona Dea. One was celebrated on May 1, in accord with her title of Maia. (This date
never did relinquish its link with the Pagan Mysteries, nor with the spring goddess Maia). The other festival was
nocturnal and lunar, always falling after within the first quarter of the moon in early December. The May rites
included the sacrifice of a pregnant sow, the animal traditionally offered to Terra Mater and Ceres / Demeter.
Matrons wearing purple headbands roasted the pig on the hearth, offering its belly to Bona Dea with libations.
(Later, they substituted sow-shaped cakes.) The eldest woman presided “in the presence of the Vestal Virgins,”
while young women took part in public games. [Life of Cicero XIX; Labeo from Macrobius; both in Brouwer,
197, 224; 351; Scheid, 391]
Cicero knew of no cult older than that of Bona Dea. [Brouwer, 257] He and other Roman writers portrayed it
as restricted to patrician women, a claim dramatically contradicted by the epigraphic evidence. Inscriptions show
freed slaves as the single largest category of Bona Dea devotees—and priestesses. Plebians are well represented
too. Lower-class devotees dedicated hundreds of inscriptions to Bona Dea at altars, wells, and sanctuaries, as well
as donating mirrors, basins, sacrificial tables, and temple repairs. [Brouwer, 256-7, 262ff, 281ff presents masses
of evidence against the aristocratic theory, pointing out that our only sources on the
goddess are patrician men, the very people who were excluded from her mysteries.]
The (elite male) literary sources emphasize that all males, including animals, were
excluded from the mysteries of Bona Dea. They even say that the women covered up
male statues and paintings during rites held in their homes. Ovid wrote that her temple
“abhors the eyes of males.” [Fasti, V.147] Unquestionably the Bona Dea rituals took
place in female space. However, men also dedicated offerings to the “Good Goddess,”
and a few are even listed as priests. [Brouwer, 281, 255-8] If and when some men were
admitted to the rites, they were ones women selected, on their terms. Lactantius names
“the temple of of Vesta, that of Bona Dea, or of Ceres” as women-only space. [Brouwer,
219] (But, interestingly, not Diana.) One of the titles of Bona Dea is Feminea Dea,
“Goddess of Women.” [Propertius, IV, 9, 25] Her mythology illuminates this emphasis,
and the reasons for it.
Fenta Fauna is called the wife, sister, or occasionally daughter of Faunus. In all
accounts, Fauna struggles against a male in authority over her, who responds with
violence, and beats her to death with myrtle sticks. (Caning with rods was Roman men’s
customary mode of punishing wives and daughters.) Plutarch explains that Fauna’s
husband, the seer Faunus, killed her with myrtle rods when he discovered she had been
Bona Dea with Snake,
secretly been drinking wine—a pleasure forbidden to women under old Roman law.
Patera, and Cornucopia
Arnobius repeats the same story, using the name Fenta Fatua. [Brouwer, 356, 196, 233,
216]
The Christian writer Lactantius calls Fenta Fauna both the sister and wife of Faunus, adding incest to the story.
He briefly alludes to her prophetic power: “... she was called Fatua since she used to foretell women their fate, as
Faunus did men.” [Lactantius, Institutiones I 22, 9, citing Gavius Bassus.] This reference harks back to the old
dedications to Neuna Fata, the Nine Fates, at Tor Tignosa, and to the Albunean (Tiburtine) sibyls. Bona Dea was
a goddess of entranced prophecy, the female counterpart of Faunus, who turns against her.
Roman men invented revisionist theories about the goddess that minimized her significance, and reinterpreted
her story in ways that obscured the female resistance of her devotees. Lactantius went so far as to claim that Bona
Dea owed her divinity to her slayer; Faunus, repenting of killing his wife, “conferred divine honor on her...”
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[Lactantius, Institutiones] Varro negated the subversiveness of the Women's Mysteries, molding their exclusive
female gatherings into a mindless embrace of the conventional patrician code of female seclusion. He claimed that
women venerated Bona Dea for her great modesty, so extreme “that no man, except her husband, has ever seen
her during her lifetime or has ever heard her name.” (He thus puts a patriarchal spin on the ritual taboo against
naming the goddess.) Servius agreed, calling Faunus' daughter “the chastest of all women and well-trained in all
skills.” [Brouwer, 218, 221] This contorted revisionism was applied even to the devotees of the goddess. Ovid
claimed that empress Livia restored the temple of Bona Dea “that she might imitate her husband and follow him
in everything.” [Fasti, V.147]
Macrobius related another version that emphasized the theme of female oppression, again involving incest.
Faunus tried to force his daughter to have sex with him. He got her drunk but she still resisted, so he beat her with
myrtle twigs. Finally he prevailed over her by turning into a serpent and penetrated her in this form. [Sat. 1.12.2029, in Brouwer, 224] All sources agree that myrtle twigs were forbidden in the precincts of Bona Dea. Many
writers have emphasized the known connection of myrtle with Aphrodite and lovemaking. Its Greek name was
code for “vulva,” and the myrtle berry symbolized the clitoris. [Keuls, 130] Tracy Boyd has illuminated this
aspect of myrtle as well as another connection, the sow as womb symbol. She emphasizes quotes Varro on the
Roman slang usage of porca, “sow,” and its Greek counterpart, choeron, for the female organ of generation. Boyd
also says that the Greeks called the sow delphas, “uterine animal,” and this is why she was the preferred offering
to Demeter. [De Re Rustica, in Boyd, online]
It’s a safe bet that the devotees of Bona Dea were not hostile to female sexuality, especially given the “revelry”
with which they celebrated her rites, and the sexual aspersions on those rites from hostile male writers like
Juvenal. Another meaning must be considered. We should not forget that in Rome, the myrtle symbolized
marriage. Brides wore myrtle wreaths, and grooms pinned sprigs on their togas. The primary story of Fauna turns
on a marriage turned disastrous by the husband acting on his privilege to punish and kill a disobedient wife. In the
rites of the Feminea Dea, women commemorated Fauna, defied the rule against female wine drinking, and
symbolically broke out of the constraints laid on Roman wives. These constraints, and the violence which
enforced them, were symbolized by the myrtle twigs, which were ritually tabooed from the women’s ceremonies.
Latin sources agree that Bona Dea’s rites involved a vessel of wine covered with a cloth, always referred to as
the “honey-jar,” and its contents as “milk.” [Arnobius, in Brouwer, 216; Macrobius, on 224] Wine was a
sacrament, as in the Dionysian mysteries, but here it has a strong subversive valence. The taboo on naming wine
harks back to the role that its prohibition to women played in the story of Fenta Fauna. Her husband put her to
death for drinking it, as old Roman law decreed: “For Romulus permitted them to punish both these acts with
death, as being the gravest offences women could be guilty of, since he looked upon adultery as the source of
reckless folly, and drunkenness as the source of adultery.” [Dionysius of Halicarnassus, 2.25.6] Both drunkenness
and adultery were serious offences for women only; men were free to indulge, and to punish women for doing so.
This injustice, and the beating to death of Fauna—in some versions her rape as well—symbolized men’s
oppression of women to her votaries. Masculine aggression (and patriarchal sanction for it) was the reason that
men were excluded from the rites. Thus Macrobius compared Bona Dea to Medea, another wronged woman who
came to be deified: “... no man may enter her temple on account of the wrong she suffered at the hands of her
thankless husband Jason.” [Brouwer, 224]
Bona Dea was the only old Roman deity, except for Diana (and later Ceres) who admitted freed slaves to the
priesthood—as did the foreign religions of Kybele, Isis, and Mithras. In strong contrast to the state cults, no social
distinction between ex-slaves and the freeborn, between citizens and foreigners, was evident in the veneration of
Bona Dea. Many devotees and magistrae (priestesses) were of foreign origin. They formed collegia that, besides
celebrating the rites, functioned as social clubs, support networks, and burial societies. [Brouwer, 258 fn25, 373]
In Provence, devotees left inscriptions “To Fortuna of Arles and Nîmes. To the ears of Bona Dea.” This phrase
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imploring the Good Goddess to listen to prayers (and perhaps also recalling the pointed ears of Fauna) occurs in
several inscriptions. The Greek freedwoman Caiena, a ministra of Bona Dea at Arles, offered her an altar adorned
with an oak-leaf wreath around the ears of the goddess, and ribbon streamers. Her altar was found in the entrance
area of Notre-Dame la Major, where a temple of Kybele once stood. The oak-leaf wreath is also reminiscent of
Diana. [Brouwer 113, 134]
Festivals and shrines of Diana and the Bona Dea became the focus of a
female culture of resistance that encompassed oppressed classes and foreigners.
To the unease of patrician men, noble matrons, prostitutes, poor women, and
slaves participated together in the rites of Bona Dea. Tibullus warned husbands:
“Be on your guard whenever she goes out and says she is going to visit Bona
Dea's sanctuary, forbidden for men.” [Brouwer, 177] Cicero told a famous story
of how Clodius disguised himself as a woman to sneak into Caesar’s house
hoping for an assignation with Pompeiia, on the night when the Women’s
Mysteries were being celebrated there. He was found out and tried for sacrilege,
but the patrician men of Rome dismissed the charges.
To the Ears of Bona Dea,
A legend recounted by Propertius and Macrobius explains the exclusion of
Inscription at Kybele
women from the rites at Rome’s Ara Maxima (great altar). The patriarchal hero
Temple in Arles, France
Hercules is thirsty after a battle. He comes across a grove, “the secret place of
the goddess of women, with holy fountains and rites never revealed to men save
to their cost.” The old priestess refused to give him water from the fountain forbidden to men, and alludes to
Athena punishing Teresias for intruding on her bath. But Hercules broke down the door, invaded the shrine, and
drank from the fountain. He then founded the Ara Maxima and retaliated by banning women from its rites.
[Properitus 4.9; Macrobius I.12.28, in Staples, 25-31; Brouwer, 178-81] This story speaks to patrician men’s
resentment and suspicion of ceremonies forbidden to them. Tellingly, it also shows the priestess wearing the same
purple fillets in her gray hair as the women who presided in the Maia ceremonies of Bona Dea.
Men of the senatorial class were openly hostile to the mystery religions. Their sodalities were considered
subversive for welcoming “despised sectors of society, such as women and slaves.” Senator Cassius Longinus
denounced large households with foreign slaves whose religion was different than their masters. Over a century
later, Juvenal complained about the Syrians and other foreigners pouring into Rome, and he ridiculed Roman
women’s participation in their ceremonies. [Lefkowitz and Fant, 109-10] As early as 213 BCE, Rome was
repressing foreign religions, according to Livy. [Vermaseren, 38] The Senate interdicted the Mysteries twice
during the Republic, in 186 BCE and again in 64 CE, when Augustus abolished all the collegia. They came back,
but the state tried to keep them under a tight rein. [Brouwer, 374] Their potent attraction was not easy to control,
however, and it only grew with time.
CEREMONIES ON THE AVENTINE
The center of the ecstatic Mysteries was the Aventine hill. This rural and plebeian district of Rome was home
to some of its oldest temples: those of Carmenta, Diana, and Mercury. Plebeian worship of the Aventine triad—
Ceres, Liber and Libera—thrived there, under the leadership of priestesses. This hill was also the headquarters of
Bona Dea, whose sanctuary was reputed to be most ancient in Rome. It was an open air shrine around a cave or
rock shelter. Its Aventine neighborhood was named Bonadensis after the Goddess, and a mention survives of “the
women of the Bona Dea quarter” being treated to mead and cakes. [Brouwer, 385]
Many foreigners settled in this neighborhood of commoners, bringing their own religions. The Aventine Hill
became a center of multicultural cross-pollination of deities, rites and symbols. [Pailler, 42, 130] Among them
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were very old deities of pre-Roman Latium. The grandmother goddess Ops was honored there in the Consualia, a
festival celebrating the storage of harvested grain. [Pouthier, 103fn] Worshippers of the goddess Stimula (“goad”)
entered into divine possession in a sacred wood at the bottom of the Aventine, along the shores of the Tiber.
Stimula eventually became syncretized with Ceres (herself interchangeable with with the Roman goddesses Tellus
and Ops) and with Semele, the mother of Dionysos. A fresco in the Villa of Mysteries at Pompei depicts her as a
winged being who whips a kneeling devotee with a cane. [Pailler, 251, 94, 133-4]
Many newcomers to the Aventine were recently conquered nationalities who had been displaced from their
homelands. They included Etruscans and Campanians from Magna Graecia in southern Italy. They brought in
Eleusinian, Dionysian and Orphic rituals; most early Roman priestesses of Ceres came from this hellenized
region. In the supplications of the ritus Graecus, great processions of singing women wound their way along the
Tiber to the Aventine temple of Juno. These rites blended easily with the Aventine mysteries of Ceres, Stimula
and Mater Matuta. [Pailler, 250, 278-9, 131, 6, 10; Scheid, 394 on carmen, ritus] On certain days the women
raised a lamentation at every crossroads, as Demeter had cried out and (as Servius observed) like the women who
wailed in the rite of Isis. [Spaeth, 107]
Ample evidence shows that Bona Dea became syncretized with other goddesses, especially her Aventine sister
Diana, who appears with her in dedications. She also was conflated with Syrian Atargatis and the Carthaginian
“All-Mother” who became known as Juno Caelestis, as shown by a Tiburtine inscription “To Holiest Bona Dea
Caelestis.” [Brouwer, 79, 392] In faraway Chesters, north England, a dedication was found to Bona Dea, Queen
of Heaven, harking back to the same ancient Semitic roots. [Brouwer, 139] A Roman woman left a stone altar
inscription at Pag Island, Dalmatia, in offering “to Bona Dea Domina Heia Augusta Triumphalis, the Mistress of
Land and Sea, the Protectress, the Mistress of Wisdom and Medicine, the Goddess of Right Judgement.”
[Brouwer, 386]
The syncretism of many goddesses into a Great Goddess is clear, as Roman writers recognized. Macrobius
described how people identified Bona Dea as Juno, or Proserpina, or Hecate, or Semele. He quoted Cornelius
Labeo as naming her Maia and Earth and as saying, “in the books of the pontiffs this same goddess is invoked as
Bona Dea, Fauna, Ops, and Fatua.” [Brower, 224] Inscriptions “To the ears of Bona Dea,” imploring the Good
Goddess to listen to prayers (perhaps recalling the pointed ears of Fauna) include the name of Fortuna. One
depicts a wreath of oak leaves, reminiscent of Diana—but was found in a sanctuary of Kybele. [Brouwer, 113,
134] An inscription in Aquileia, Slovenia, invokes Bona Dea as Augusta Bona Dea Cereria. In fact, the Good
Goddess shows many similarities to Ceres, including the sow sacrifice and her association with Liber, the Roman
form of Dionysus. [Brouwer, 412-20]
The mystery religion that emerged from this fusion came to be called the Bacchanalia, after a Roman name for
the Dionysian rites. A growing number of Roman women were attracted to these ecstatic ceremonies. In them,
they could step outside of male control and into a ceremonial world led by women, turning the tables on the rigid
constraints of male dominated Roman society: “Always in Dionysian initiation scenes [in Rome], it is women
who act as the leaders and initiators: the women have control of the veiled men or boys who are evidently the
neophytes.” [Godwin, 41] By all accounts, most of the initiates were female.Titus Livy acknowledged that these
mysteries of the Bacchanals “had at first been a woman's sanctuary, and ordinarily no man was admitted... usually
matrons were chosen in turn to act as priestesses.” This statement contradicted Livy's own claim that the entire
spiritual movement had been started by a “lowborn” Greek man. Unfortunately, his strongly biased account is
virtually the sole historical source on the first mass witch hunt. Livy presents the official senatorial rationale for
the “pitiless repression” that stamped out the matres bacchicae in 186 BCE. [Paillier, xiii, 8, 14, 596]
Continued in “The First Great Witch Hunt,” on the Roman repression of the Bacchanalia in 187-86 bce. Full
bibliographical citation is reserved for publication of Vol III of Secret History of the Witches.